Whether at a worksite, in a vehicle, or at home, unstored and unsecured tools present obvious problems: disorganization, potential damage to tools, tool loss or theft, and even danger to those working or near such tools. For example, the practice of keeping a shovel and an axe loose within a truck presents opportunities for these tools to be stolen, to be damaged, or to cause injury during truck movement.
A number of devices have been developed which attempt to store and secure tools in a variety of ways. For example, a common type of tool rack relies upon gravity to hold stored tools in proper position on the tool rack. Tools in this type of rack are suspended by their tool heads (e.g., in the case of an axe or hammer, suspended by the axe head and hammer head, respectively), leaving their handles to rest in a vertical position from the force of gravity. However, this type of tool rack is inappropriate where the tool rack orientation may be changed often (such as where the tool rack is mounted on a vehicle) or where several different rack mounting orientations are desired.
Other types of tool racks attempt to more fully secure the tools they house by securing the tools at both ends. However, these tool racks suffer from other deficiencies. For example, the means by which these tool racks hold tool ends are often difficult to manipulate, requiring significant time to ready the tool rack for placing a tool within the rack, to insert the tool properly in place within the tool rack, and to secure the tool within the tool rack. Furthermore, a number of the means by which these tool racks secure tools within their racks do not easily permit a user to lock the tools in place (against theft or unauthorized use of the tools). Also, due to significant design limitations, a number of these tool racks only permit a particular tool shape or range of tool shapes to fit within their racks. Finally, a serious problem rarely addressed by conventional tool racks is space limitation. Few tool racks are designed with an eye toward optimizing the space occupied by tools within their racks. The placement and arrangement of tools within such racks is often at the expense of efficient tool rack size and tool protection (from tool damage and from injury to others near the tool rack).
While the prior tool rack designs may deal with storing and/or securing tools, none adequately provide for a tool rack which fully secures tools within the rack, provides protection from unauthorized tool removal, offers a tool mounting design in which tools may be quickly and easily mounted and removed from the tool rack, accepts a wide variety of tool shapes and types, optimizes tool space, and protects against damage to tools and by tools stored within the rack. What is needed is a tool rack which has a simple, inexpensive design and which achieves all the aforementioned objectives. The invention as described herein provides such a design and meets these objectives.